Nominations for the local elections in Wales

Blog readers will doubtless be aware that the local elections are coming up soon. (May 4th, to be precise). Nominations have now closed, and my friend Harry Hayfield has undertaken the laborious task of not only totally all the nominations by party, but also comparing the total with the numbers of candidates that each party stood in the equivalent elections in 2012/13. Here is what he has come up with:

Among the interesting features of these numbers are the very large number of Labour candidates and the relatively low number of Liberal Democrats. We also see a greatly increased number of UKIP candidates – yet that party continuing to be a long way behind the more traditional main parties in its presence in the local elections. It remains to be seen how effective each of the parties will be at targetting their efforts. Among the Others, this election no longer sees any ‘Merthyr Independents’ or ‘Neath and Port Talbot Independents’; it does, however, witness the arrival of the Cynon Valley Party.

(Harry notes that “A lot of these tallies were done by contributors to the Vote 2012 UK forum online so I am grateful to them”).